‘That’s because they keep it in their underwear,’ the day boss had told her.
The Asians… whatever they were… sometimes worked in local restaurants; you could smell the kitchen on their crumpled jackets and shirts. Fierce gamblers, no game was ever played quickly enough for their liking. They’d slap their chips down like they were in a playground betting game. And they talked a lot, almost never in English. The gaffers didn’t like that, never could tell what they might be scheming. But their money was good, they seldom caused trouble, and they lost a percentage same as everyone else.
‘Daft bastards,’ the night manager said. ‘Know what they do with a big win? Go bung it on the gee-gees. Where’s the sense in that?’
Where indeed? No point giving your money to a bookmaker when the casino would happily take it instead.
It wasn’t really on for croupiers to be friends with the clients, but sometimes it happened. And it couldn’t very well not happen with Matty and Stevie Scoular, since they’d been in the same year at school. Not that they’d known one another well. Stevie had been the football genius, also more than fair at the hundred and two hundred metres, swimming and basketball. Matty, on the other hand, had skived off games whenever possible, forgetting to bring his kit or getting his mum to write him notes. He was good at a couple of subjects – maths and woodwork – but never sat beside Stevie in class. They even lived at opposite ends of the town.
At playtime and lunchtime, Matty ran a card game – three-card brag mostly, sometimes pontoon – playing for dinner money, pocket money, sweets and comics. A few of the cards were nicked at the corners, but the other players didn’t seem to notice and Matty got a reputation as ‘lucky’. He’d take bets on horse races too, sometimes passing the bets on to an older boy who wouldn’t be turned away by the local bookmaker. Often though, Matty would simply pocket the money and if someone’s horse happened to win, he’d say he couldn’t get the bets on in time and hand back the stake.
He couldn’t tell you exactly when it was that Stevie had started spending less breaktime dribbling past half a dozen despairing pairs of legs and more hanging around the edges of the card school. Thing about three-card brag, it doesn’t take long to pick it up and even a moron can have a stab at playing. Soon enough, Stevie was losing his dinner money with the rest of them, and Matty’s pockets were about bursting with loose change. Eventually, Stevie had seemed to see sense, drifted away from the game and back to keepie-up and dribbling. But he’d been hooked, no doubt about it. Maybe only for a few weeks, but a lot of those lunchtimes had been spent cadging sweets and apple cores, the better to stave off hunger.
Even then, Matty had thought he’d be seeing Stevie again. It had just taken the best part of a decade, that was all.
When Stevie Scoular walked into the casino, people looked his way. It was the done thing. He was a sharp dresser, young, usually accompanied by women who looked like models. When Stevie had first walked into the Morvena, Matty’s heart had sunk. They hadn’t seen one another since school and here Stevie was, local boy made good, a hero, picture in the papers and plenty of money in the bank. Here was a schoolboy dream made flesh. And what was Matty? He had stories he could tell but that was about it. So he’d been hoping Stevie wouldn’t grace his table, or if he did that he wouldn’t recognise him. But Stevie had seen him, seemed to know him straight off and come bouncing up.
‘Matty!’
‘Hello there, Stevie.’
It was flattering really. Stevie hadn’t become big-headed or anything. He took the whole thing – the way his life had gone – as a bit of a joke really. He’d made Matty promise to meet him for a drink when his shift was over. All through their conversation, Matty had been aware of gaffers hovering and when Stevie wandered off to another table one of them muttered in Matty’s ear and another croupier took over from him.
He hadn’t been in the plush back office that often, just for the initial interview and to discuss a couple of big losses on his table. The casino’s owner, Mr Mandelson, was watching a football match on Sky Sports. He was well-built, mid-forties, his face pockmarked from childhood acne. His hair was black, slicked back from the forehead, long at the collar. He always seemed to know what he was about.
‘How’s the table tonight?’ he asked.
‘Look, Mr Mandelson, I know we’re not supposed to be too friendly with the punters, but Stevie and me were at school together. Haven’t clapped eyes on one another since – not till tonight.’
‘Easy, Matty, easy.’ Mandelson motioned for him to sit down. ‘Something to drink?’ A smile. ‘No alcohol on shift, mind.’
‘Ehh… a Coke maybe.’
‘Help yourself.’
There was a fridge in the far corner, stocked with white wine, champagne and soft drinks. A couple of the female croupiers said Mandelson had tried it on with them, plying them with booze. But he didn’t seem upset by a refusaclass="underline" they still had their jobs. There were seven female croupiers all told, and only two had spoken to Matty about it. It made him wonder about the other five.
He took a Coke and sat down again.
‘So, you and Stevie Scoular, eh?’
‘I haven’t seen him in here before.’
‘I think he only recently found out about the place. He’s been in a few times, dropped some hefty bets.’ Mandelson was staring at him. ‘You and Stevie, eh?’
‘Look, if you’re worried, just take me off whatever table he’s playing.’
‘Nothing like that, Matty.’ Mandelson’s face broke into a grin. ‘It’s nice to have a friend, eh? Nice to meet up again after all these years. Don’t you worry about anything. Stevie’s the King of Edinburgh. As long as he keeps scoring goals, we’re all his subjects.’ He paused. ‘Nice to know someone who knows the King, almost makes me feel like royalty myself. On you go now, Matty.’
Matty got up, leaving the Coke unopened.
‘And don’t you go upsetting that young man. We don’t want to put him off his game, do we?’
Four
It had taken a couple of days to get the tape from Gaitanos. At first, they thought they’d wiped it, and then they’d sent the wrong day’s recording. But at last Rebus had the right tape and had watched it at home half a dozen times before deciding he could use someone who knew what he was doing… and a video machine that would freeze-frame without the screen looking like a technical problem.
Now he’d seen all there was to see. He’d watched a young man cease to exist. Of course, Hendry was right, a lot of people disappeared every year. Sometimes they turned up again – dead or alive – and sometimes they didn’t. What did it have to do with Rebus, beyond the promise to a family that he’d make sure the Fife police hadn’t missed something? Maybe the pull wasn’t Damon Mee, but Bowhill itself; and maybe even then, the Bowhill of his past rather than the town as it stood today.
He was working the Damon Mee case in his free time, which, since he was on day shift at St Leonard’s, meant the evenings. He’d checked again with the bank – no money had been withdrawn from any machines since the twenty-second – and with Damon’s building society. No money had been withdrawn from that account either. Even this wasn’t unknown in the case of a runaway; sometimes they wanted to shed their whole history, which meant ditching their identity and everything that went with it. Rebus had passed a description of Matty to hostels and drop-in centres in Edinburgh, and faxed the same description to similar centres in Glasgow, Newcastle, Aberdeen and London. He’d also faxed details to the National Missing Persons Bureau in London. He checked with a colleague who knew about ‘MisPers’ that he’d done about all he could.